By KATH GANNAWAY
THE Royal Commission into Family Violence released Wednesday 30 March has delivered a raft of 227 recommendations to the Victorian Government.
Premier Daniel Andrews responded with a broad commitment to implement every one of the recommendations and said work was already underway on recommendations around risk management and information sharing.
“There can be no more excuses,” he said.
“Our work begins today to overhaul our broken family violence system from the bottom up.”
The commission’s recommendations that call for new approaches cover a number of key areas including the establishment of Support and Safety Hubs in local communities to make it easier for victims to find help and access a greater range of services.
Other recommendations are for:
- Victims’ safety being forefront over ‘privacy issues’ with a Central Information Point to funnel information about perpetrators to the hubs.
- An immediate funding boost to services that support victims and families with additional resources for Aboriginal community initiatives, and with a dedicated funding stream for preventing family violence.
- Expanded investigative capacity for police and more specialist family violence courts that can deal simultaneously with criminal, civil and family law matters.
- Stronger perpetrator programs and increased monitoring and oversight by agencies.
- Family violence training for all key workforces, including in hospitals and schools.
Among these recommendations, two address the recurring and underlying issues that the Mail touched on in its six-week ‘Stop the Violence Campaign’ in 2011.
They are a lack of accommodation for victims, which effectively stops them leaving a violent situation, and the need to address the cause of family violence from an early age.
The commission’s recommendations call for a ‘blitz’ to rehouse women and children forced to leave their homes which would be supported with expanded individual funding packages.
Investment in future generations would come from expanded respectful relationships education in schools.
Julia Blackburn, Yarra Valley Community Health’s Family health Promotion worker at the time, identified a culture of gender inequality as underpinning violence against women, but, in line with the commission’s recommendation, saw education as a conduit for change.
“Violence against women is preventable because it’s a behaviour, not a disease,” she told the Mail.
“It’s important to not always focus on the end result (of abuse and violence against women) but to invest in the ‘why’,” she said.
A lack of available, safe and affordable housing was another issue identified as critical to empowering women to leave a violent relationship.
The Victorian Council of Social Service said at the time that an alarming jump in family violence reflected in police statistics was exacerbated by a lack of housing options for vulnerable women and children.
Commissioner Marcia Neave says in the report that the current response to family violence largely assumes that women will leave their home when family violence occurs.
“For those who must leave, homelessness and housing systems cannot guarantee a safe place to stay, or a permanent home that is affordable,” she said.
“For those who remain at home, monitoring of the perpetrator is inadequate.”
The recommended accommodation ‘blitz’ is one of the 227 recommendations that the government has committed to.
“We need lasting generational reform that changes attitudes and behaviours,” Fiona Richardson, Minister for Prevention of Family Violence
Signing off on the 2011 campaign, the Mail spoke of the hope that it would not only raise issues that affected so many families in Yarra Ranges but “bring the issue out of the shadows and give victims a voice”.
We hoped also for tangible outcomes.
Minister for Prevention of Family Violence Fiona Richardson said on Wednesday that the Royal Commission Report “will change everything”.
“We want to create a new system that helps prevent violence and gives victims and survivors the support they need.
“We need lasting generational reform that changes attitudes and behaviours,” Ms Richardson said.
An independent Family Violence Agency will be set up to hold government to account.
The commission’s report is available at www.vic.gov.au/familyviolenceresponse
